


Incommensurable Magnitudes

by whereismygarden



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 02:05:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6733591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie and Ian have a conversation about what constitutes friendship and other relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incommensurable Magnitudes

**Author's Note:**

> Set after "Spree" and "Two Daughters" and around/during "Pandora's Box."

                “What are you still doing here?” It’s Agent Edgerton, still with his usual cup of coffee in hand despite it being late at night. Charlie lifts his head from the table in the conference room.

                “Uh,” he says. “I’m supposed to go on a date, I think.”

                Edgerton gives him a look. He isn’t sure, but his guess is that the look means ‘what the hell is wrong with you?’

                “Unless you want to learn how to clean a rifle, don’t let me keep you.” Edgerton flicks the lights on, making Charlie wince. He stretches his neck: sleeping with his head on a table gets harder with every year older he gets.

                “You’re not keeping me,” Charlie assures him, holding a hand up. He’s interested now. “And, well, I guess it would be good to know the mechanics of firearms, considering how much time I have to spend considering them.”

                “You’re not going to figure out whether you’re supposed to be on a date?”

                Don would be judging him so much right now. He can’t tell if Edgerton is: the guy always sounds slightly amused, whether they’re discussing radio commercials on the way to a crime scene or serial murders.

                “Dating is a lot of pressure,” he says. “I don’t want to disappoint her.” Logically, he’s more likely to disappoint her by sitting here, watching Edgerton’s grease-stained fingers pull apart his rifle, than by calling her. But he still doesn’t call.

                “People,” Edgerton says. “I thought you’d be good at it, apply your—“ he waves a hand—“voodoo.”

                “It’s not voodoo,” Charlie insists, because the joke is some kind of ritual between them now, and he must complete his half. “And I don’t think there is much mathematics that can be applied to interpersonal relationships. Statistical data and models can certainly be applied to think about outcomes—“

                “Aren’t math and statistics the same thing?” Agent Edgerton looks up from where he’s wiping off an inside part of his rifle with a soft cloth.

                “No,” Charlie says. “Not—not really.”

                “I learn something everyday,” Edgerton says lightly, and smiles his usual insincere smile. Charlie gets irritated.

                “Well, maybe I can learn something,” he says, trying to calm down and not think about Amita’s disappointment. “How do you manage your interpersonal relationships with your job? I mean, I get the feeling that like me, your job is your—your passion.”

                Edgerton laughs softly and snaps two pieces of the rifle apart: they make a sharp cracking sound, and Charlie jumps.

                “Easy: I don’t have interpersonal relationships.” He’s still smiling, and Charlie can’t tell if he’s bothered.

                “Well, you have friends though—Don—“

                “Don and I are colleagues,” Edgerton corrects, smile fading.

                “I know he’s mad at you, but he’s really mad at himself.”

                “Friendly colleagues, but colleagues,” Edgerton finishes, not acknowledging Charlie’s interjection. “I know that my job, my calling, my skillset—they aren’t compatible with things like going on dates, or having close friends. That’s fine with me. I like my life.”

                “But you seem—“ Charlie isn’t sure how to phrase this without being downright offensive. “I mean, you talk to people just fine. You’ve been tracking criminals for years, and you’re not—you seem really well adjusted.”

                Edgerton laughs out loud, just for a beat, and Charlie can’t help but grin at the sight. It’s self-deprecation—instinctive self-deprecation at that—on Edgerton’s part, but he’s genuinely laughing.

                “I am really well self-contained,” he corrects. “I don’t let all _my,”_ he pauses, smirks a little, “voodoo, get all over everything else.”

                “By not having anything else?” Charlie counters, and Edgerton’s face hardens up again. “Sorry, that was—I don’t know anything about your life. I can’t make judgments.”

                “You are good at understanding math, and physics, and teaching students. It makes you good at helping the FBI solve crimes. I am good at understanding and following twisted people, and shooting them. It makes _me_ good at helping the FBI solve crimes.” Edgerton looks down at the piece of metal in his hands: Charlie doesn’t know what part of the gun it is, but it does bring home to him that the man standing in front of him kills people with it, on a regular basis. It reminds him of his first abrasive encounter with the agent.

                “You were right—my job is my passion. But if you talk about your passion over dinner, you sound like a scattered, offbeat, but ultimately charming math professor. I would sound—I would put people off their dinner.”

                Charlie doesn’t know what to say to that, so he turns it over in his head a few times, searching for the flaw that he can sense. Part of it becomes clear to him, coming apart like a misplaced negative in a botched undergraduate proof.

                “So what?” he asks. “You’re saying you don’t have friends or “relationships” for the other person’s sake? That’s not—that’s not how relationships work. The deal is that you deal with each other’s crap. You give and take. There are plenty of people who can handle the stuff that you do.” He sighs out a heavy breath. “If you don’t want that, that’s fine, but it’s not because other people can’t stomach you, it’s because you’ve locked yourself away from them.”

                “Don can’t stomach me,” Edgerton snaps back.

                “Don can’t stomach himself,” Charlie returns. “He--he’s mad that he let you do whatever it was he couldn’t do, and then whatever he did after that. He’s upset because he’s complicit, but he couldn’t do it—God, I don’t even know exactly what happened, but I know you guys crossed a line and Don isn’t okay with it yet.”

                “ _Don_ crossed a line,” Edgerton says, putting the pieces of his gun into their case. “I didn’t. The line, for me, is much further away. And that’s why people can’t stomach me.” He closes the case, shrugs. “I’m not tortured about it. I don’t think I did anything wrong. I didn’t lose sleep over Buck Winters: just over the people he gunned down because I didn’t catch him back in Texas.”

                “But do you get why Don is upset?” Charlie asks.

                “Yeah. But I don’t like it.”

                Charlie has to smile to himself a little bit, and Edgerton notices.

                “What?”

                “You are friends with Don,” he says, because he knows he’s right. “I’m not sure you’re even clear on what exactly defines a friend.” He smiles more, watches the tension and aggression melt out of Edgerton’s eyes, watches the usual amusement flow back in.

                “Professor,” Edgerton says, and Charlie can’t do more than breathe in at the warmth in his eyes—a lot of warmth for such a cold man. “Call your girlfriend.”

                “I—I don’t think I want to,” he says, frozen.

                “What are you gonna stick around here for?” Edgerton is still looking over the table at him: Charlie hasn’t moved his eyes away. He can’t move his body. Some part of him is making a note about how Edgerton is, by nature, by calling, by training, a hunter, that Charlie’s frozen like prey before him. Like a deer looking into the eyes of a lion.

                “I still need to explain how statistics is not synonymous with mathematics,” he says. Edgerton’s eyes darken, amused.

                “You do?”

                Charlie, not quite in control of his own body, leans forward, across the table, and closes the gap between their gazes as best as he can. Edgerton lets it happen, mouth still under Charlie’s. Charlie closes his eyes, ignores the edge of the table digging into his legs. It’s not quite reciprocated: Edgerton’s mouth is still, hardly pushing back against his.

                And Edgerton breaks it off, stepping back and leaving Charlie to overbalance forwards and catch himself on the table.

                For a moment, he’s terrified, a sick wave of apprehension rising from his chest up his throat. Edgerton is so—so macho, lone gunslinger, that Charlie half expects him to lose it completely. But he doesn’t, he just stares back at Charlie. Charlie walks around the table, smiling when Edgerton backs up another step before catching himself and standing his group.

                “You think I can’t stomach you?” he asks, making his smile as welcoming as possible. He knows full well he has a disarming smile. “Or were you just going to push and expect me not to push back?” He doesn’t know how FBI agents do their flirting. He has a guess that ex-military men rarely push past flirting.

                “Professor,” Edgerton starts, and Charlie reaches up to put his palm carefully on the side of his face.

                “You don’t have to agree to anything,” he says. “You don’t have to share yourself or your secrets. Just—be honest about what you do tell me.”

                “Is that what you’re doing?” Edgerton says, eyes sharp. “Being honest?”

                “I’m not calling her,” Charlie says, a shock of fear going through him at the words. “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

                To his surprise, Edgerton leans forward, turns him while barely touching him, and then Charlie’s back is against the wall of the room and Edgerton is close enough that he’s going to get a crick in his neck from looking up at him.

                “This is a situation where there’s a moral line for you and Don, but not for me,” Edgerton says. “So you can step up and meet me there, but if you’re going to talk about honesty, I recommend not lying to yourself.” He breathes it against Charlie’s ear, lips lingering so close they brush his skin, his body millimeters away. Equations on convective heat transfer, Xeno’s paradox, rates of electrical impulse transmission, all skitter through his mind. His lips are burning with the need to kiss Edgerton. His hands are aching with it.

                “I’m,” Charlie swallows, tries to will moisture into his mouth, “I’m going to call Amita, and tell her we need to talk.”

                “Okay then,” Edgerton says, and kisses him, until he’s swamped in desire. Charlie stops him, after a moment, with a hand on his chest.

                “Wait, what are you doing?” he gasps out. Edgerton tilts his head, like a confused dog.

                “Are you not on board after all?” he asks.

                “There’s a distance between saying I’m going to really end things with my sort-of girlfriend, and doing it. Since we’re talking about honesty.”

                “For me,” Edgerton says, retreating to sit in a chair, arms folded, “exclusivity on your part is not—I don’t care. I’ve already said I don’t do relationships, right? I’m in L.A. infrequently. Feel free to end things or not with her, as you like. What makes you feel comfortable.”

                Charlie tries to imagine explaining _that_ to Amita: well, if it’s fine with you I’d like to date you both? No: Amita would never want that, and he doesn’t want that either. Two people—no, not for him.

                “I need to think about it,” he says, into his hands. He needs a cold shower before he can think about anything ever again.

                “Of course you do, professor,” Edgerton says. Charlie turns.

                “You know, everyone else at the bureau calls me Charlie,” he says.

                “People call me Ian,” Edgerton returns, even though hardly any of them do. Charlie grins.

                “I’ll see you later, Ian.” He wants to say, “hopefully soon,” but he can’t promise, not yet. But—he’s going to think about it. As hard as he thinks about anything.

               

**Author's Note:**

> The title refers to the problems in logic and mathematics of infinite continua between whole numbers/discrete entities. E.g., Zeno's paradoxes, but also how close you can get to other people, figuratively. I had to have a math-y title.
> 
> They are both, as far as I can see, affable people in canon, but highly guarded under friendly exteriors (or just way less complex than I give them credit for).


End file.
